


“a werewolf but instead of a wolf it’s a pomeranian”

by radioactivesaltghoul



Series: shittycryptids [2]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Crack, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, F/M, Fluff, No Pregnancy, Safe to Read if You're Triggered by Pregnancy, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 00:13:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24045721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radioactivesaltghoul/pseuds/radioactivesaltghoul
Summary: “I’m—” Oh, god, why was this so hard to say, she’d rehearsed her cover story in her room a hundred times over the last two days,come on Rey just say the words“—watching my friend’s dog tonight. Is that okay? I know the lease says that big dogs aren’t allowed, but she’s really small.”Or: Rey has a secret, and she can’t let the hot new roommate she’s already smitten with know about it.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Series: shittycryptids [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1736260
Comments: 89
Kudos: 295





	“a werewolf but instead of a wolf it’s a pomeranian”

**Author's Note:**

  * For [WhatSorceressIsThis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhatSorceressIsThis/gifts).



> i’m back on my bullshit again with another [shittycryptids-inspired au](https://shittycryptids.tumblr.com/post/617110496783532032/a-werewolf-but-instead-of-a-wolf-its-a-pomeranian)
> 
> For WhatSorceressIsThis, for being the kind of friend who encourages me to write things like “a werewolf but instead of a wolf it’s a pomeranian”. 
> 
>   
> 

Rey’s phone chimed with a notification, which was inconvenient seeing as her hands were currently covered in flour. She knew what it was, anyway; she used a different notification tone for _these_ reminders.

Ben, her roommate as of three weeks ago, nodded at where her phone was laying on the counter. “Your phone went off. Looks like a calendar notification.”

She tried to hide her grimace. No sense in tipping him off about how she was going to spend tonight. “Thanks,” she said, continuing to cut the dough into bone shapes.

“What are you cooking?”

“Dog cookies,” she replied, scooping the dough scraps together so that she could roll it out again and shape the remnants into something the cookie cutter could handle. “I’m—” Oh, god, why was this so hard to say, she’d rehearsed her cover story in her room a hundred times over the last two days, _come on Rey just say the words_ “—watching my friend’s dog tonight. Is that okay? I know the lease says that big dogs aren’t allowed, but she’s really small.”

She’d determined, over the previous three weeks—a month, if she included the week between responding to Ben’s Craigstlist “room for rent” post and signing the lease—that her new roommate was quiet in a way that seemed more like shyness than aloofness. He spent a surprising amount of time working out for someone who just sat behind a computer all day, but Rey was certainly not complaining about _that_. When she’d asked how he felt about pets, he’d just shrugged and said that he didn’t have any, but he wasn’t opposed to having a cat. She hadn’t been able to figure out a way to ask how he felt about dogs that wasn’t too obvious.

He hesitated long enough for Rey’s anxiety to kick in. What was she going to do if he said no? She was new to Chandrila; it wasn’t like she had anyplace else to go. When she’d lived in Jakku, safety hadn’t been as much of an issue. It was equally unsafe everywhere. Rey had lunged for the opportunity to get a scholarship to study mechanical engineering at Chandrila University, but she hadn’t considered how she’d manage her… _condition_ outside of her hometown.

“That’s fine, I guess,” he finally answered. Rey’s shoulders sagged in relief. She’d hoped he would sound a little more enthusiastic about the possibility of having a small, fluffy animal hanging around the apartment all night, but at least he wasn’t outright turning her down.

“Thank you,” she said, placing the last dog cookie on the baking tray. She slid it into the oven before turning to face Ben.

He was sitting at one end of the dining room table, hunched over a computer, but he looked over at her when the oven door shut. “Are you having a friend over as well? Because if so, let me reiterate what we agreed on with regards to guests.”

“No, my friend—she’s just stopping by real fast to drop the dog off,” she explained, praying she sounded like it was no big deal. “I’d let you know if I was expecting company, don’t worry.” Not that she really had any friends, anyway. Just the one imaginary friend with the not-so-imaginary dog.

Something in his posture relaxed fractionally at the confirmation that he wouldn’t have to deal with any human beings outside of Rey.

Ben Solo, she had come to realize, was as introverted as they came. When they agreed to move in together, he’d made it very clear that he didn’t expect them to become best friends simply because they happened to share an apartment. Initially, Rey had been relieved because she’d never been particularly great at making friends, and she hated the idea of screwing something up with the person who she was now locked into a year-long lease with.

Then, not even a week after she moved in, he commented on her Star Trek-themed fleece blanket—her single contribution towards living room furniture—and they launched into a discussion about who their favorite Next Gen characters were (Rey: Worf, Ben: Data).

After that, things fell into place, for better or for worse. Rey had known she was attracted to him when she’d agreed to move in with him, but the apartment was within walking distance of campus and the rent was incredibly affordable for the neighborhood. “The building is old, and so are the appliances, but it’s a fair trade-off given how much I pay in rent,” Ben had explained when she’d gone over to tour the place.

She could deal with being attracted to her roommate. It was fine. Rey was good at compartmentalizing. Now, she had bigger things to worry about than a crush on her roommate: she couldn’t let him find out her secret.

Hence the imaginary friend with the not-so-imaginary dog.

“You don’t need to worry about feeding her, or anything,” Rey assured Ben. “You don’t even have to take her out. She won’t run away if you let her outside for a little while. She’s a very reasonable dog.”

Reasonable. She wanted to kick herself over her choice of words. Who the hell called a dog _reasonable_?

Ben frowned. “But you’ll be around, right?”

Shit. “Oh, of course!” And she would be, in a manner of speaking. “Just, you know, if I’m in the shower or something.”

“Right.” He didn’t look entirely at-ease, but Rey was running out of time. Sunset was less than an hour away, and she had to time this just right.

Half an hour later, Rey heard the front door lock as Ben left for his evening trip to the gym. (At least, she assumed it was a trip to the gym. He always came back covered in sweat; she didn’t want to consider other explanations for it.)

She breathed a sigh of relief. With two minutes to go, she tapped out a message on her phone.

Ben Solo  
  
**Rey:** I’m so sorry to do this. I just got called into work. The dog is in the apartment. She’ll be fine until I get back. Just watch your feet; she’s small.  
  


With one minute to go, she stripped down in preparation for her monthly curse. When Rey was in pomeranian form, she still maintained enough of her human mind to stay out of trouble, but she’d learned the hard way that her dog brain was terrified of being tangled in human clothing.

Unlike the werewolves of legend, Rey’s transformation was painless. One minute she was human; the next, she was a four-pound dog. She’d had this affliction as far back as she could remember, and she’d never met anyone else like her. Her foster father had never paid enough attention to her to realize that his charge traded places with a tiny dog every full moon, so it had never really become an issue until she’d left Jakku a month ago.

After shrinking into a tiny ball of fluff, she yawned. More than anything, having to give up one night per month to spend as an animal was annoying. She had exams to study for, and she could have actually been working tonight.

Rey was pacing around the apartment when she heard the sound of the front door unlocking. Even though it sounded differently to her dog ears, it was still familiar enough for her brain to understand what it meant.

And then the dog brain went _wild._

“Barkbarkbarkbarkbark!”

“Jesus Christ,” Ben yelled as he was attacked by a four-pound ball of fluff. Because _oh,_ human Rey may have been able to compartmentalize her crush on Ben, but dog Rey could not. “What the—” He knelt down in front of her, holding a hand out for her to sniff. (She made a note to see if he smelled the same way when she was in human form. For science.)

Rey continued to have zero chill as she started licking his hand. “You must be Rey’s friend’s dog,” Ben rumbled. Well, maybe it wasn’t a full rumble, but that’s what it sounded like to dog ears. “You’re cuter than I thought you would have been.” He stood up, absolutely towering over her. “I’ll have to ask Rey what your name is when she gets home.”

She wagged her tail in response. Her dog brain wanted to run around his feet in circles; her human brain was all-too-aware of how easily he could accidentally crush her.

Ben allowed her to follow him around for a bit, but he drew the line at letting her in his room. “No,” he said firmly. “No dogs allowed.”

Rey whined, but he didn’t relent.

She eventually wandered into her own room, pacing around in circles. What she really wanted to do was sit outside Ben’s bedroom door and whine until he let her in. Fortunately, she had enough control over her animal impulses that she didn’t give into the clingy urge. And eventually, she fell asleep.

Rey woke up naked on her bedroom floor the next morning feeling like she may have actually pulled the whole thing off. Ben was already at work, but the only message she had from him was a simple _Okay, thanks for letting me know_ in response to her made-up excuse for being absent while pet-sitting.

She didn’t see him until later on that night when she got home from campus to find him cooking stir-fry in the kitchen. “Did your friend come get her dog?” he asked.

Rey nodded. “Thanks for keeping an eye on her while I was called into work.”

Ben shrugged, giving no indication of whether he found it a hardship to deal with a tiny animal in his home for a few hours. “What’s her name?” he asked.

Shit. She should have been prepared for this question. “The dog? Or my friend?”

“The dog. I wasn’t expecting her to be that small. Or fluffy.” He smiled as he said it, making her feel reassured about the situation.

She smiled back at him. “Her name is Kira,” she told him, choosing a name at random. “So you’re okay if she comes back? The dog, I mean.”

“She’s cute,” he replied, “but I can’t sign on to be a dog babysitter if you’re not going to be around.”

“Right.” That was going to be a difficult condition to fill. “Well. Good.”

Somehow, she pulled it off again a month later. And the month after that. Ben seemed to warm up to the idea of having a ball of fluff following him around once a month, even though Rey always seemed to be mysteriously absent when “Kira” was there.

He warmed up with Rey, too, and in practically no time at all her crush had blown up into full-on love. Oh, sure, she’d started to make friends with her classmates and her coworkers, but there was no one in her life quite like Ben. Within a matter of months, she realized that she couldn’t picture her life without him.

Which was a problem. See, Ben sometimes talked to “Kira,” but he did it in the way that people spoke _at_ things rather than _to_ them. Rey was dying to know what he’d say about her to a dog, but he never seemed to drop any hints or indications that her feelings for him were mutual.

One full moon about six months after Rey moved in, Ben sat down on the couch and put on some Star Trek.

Predictably, Rey followed him, fully intending to curl up at his feet and enjoy the show. To her surprise, Ben picked her up and set her down on the couch next to him. “It’s probably a little more comfortable than the floor,” he said to her.

In response, she lay down next to him, laying her tiny dog head next to his thigh. _Oh,_ he was so warm and he smelled so good and before she realized what she was doing, she’d crawled up onto his lap to watch TV from there.

She felt Ben tense under her for a moment before he relaxed. “I’m going to be covered in dog hair,” he said, starting to pet her, “but you’re so cute that I can’t say no.”

 _Yes, yes!_ she wanted to scream. _Tell me how cute I am!_ Instead, she sighed happily. Even if she’d never get this as Rey-the-human, at least she could get it as Kira-the-dog.

He was so comfortable, in fact, that before she knew it, she was drifting off to sleep.

* * *

Rey usually slept through the reverse transformation back into human.

Usually, however, she didn’t fall asleep on her roommate’s lap.

There was a big difference between Rey as a human and Rey as a pomeranian. Unsurprisingly, falling asleep on Ben’s lap as a pomeranian meant that he’d notice the instant she turned back to her usual form, because he suddenly had a naked woman in his lap.

Which meant that she woke up to the sound of Ben shouting, “Rey? What the _actual fuck_ are you doing right now?”

“Shit!” she hissed, scrambling off of his lap and onto the floor. “Shit, shit, shit, fuck, I can explain—fuck, where is that blanket—” She hadn’t turned to look at Ben yet. She was afraid of the expression she’d see on his face, so she used the excuse of scrambling to find her Star Trek blanket to look away. When he never replied, she forced herself to turn to him, covering herself up as well as she could.

He was gaping like he’d never seen anything quite like her before. Which, in all fairness, he probably hadn’t.

But it wasn’t... _bad_ gaping. In fact, the blush rising on his cheeks and ears could have been interpreted as titillation, if she was feeling optimistic. “Hi,” she said, needing to break the tension between them. “Um. I can explain.”

That seemed to clear his haze a bit. He cleared his throat. “Please do.”

“I’m a—” Shit, why was this so hard to say, he’d already woken up with her naked and on his lap in place of a fucking dog “—werewolf. Or something along those lines. I turn into a pomeranian during the full moon.”

And great, now he was back to gaping at her in silence.

“Ben?” she prompted, hating how small her voice sounded.

“I want to say this is the dumbest elaborate prank in the world, except that it always happens the night of the full moon and the fact that I’ve never seen you on nights that Kira is here,” he said slowly. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “And say what? ‘Oh, hey, by the way, I’m a particularly unusual cryptid: a werewolf but instead of a wolf it’s a pomeranian.’”

He snorted. “Good point.” He hadn’t moved from his spot on the couch, but he didn’t look like he was comfortable. He was sorta slouched at a strange angle, almost as if he was—

Rey couldn’t stop herself from glancing down at the bulge in his sweatpants. Her face, already red due to shock and embarrassment, grew even hotter as she realized what it meant.

Huh. Maybe her feelings were mutual, after all. On a physical level, anyway.

“I’m sorry about this,” she said, gesturing towards her blanket-wrapped body. “I really, really didn’t want you to find out this way. I. Um.” She inhaled deeply. Now that the truth had started spilling out, she couldn’t stop it. “I can’t control the transformation, but I don’t get completely taken over by animal instincts when I turn. It’s just so difficult to stay away from you because I love spending time with you, even if you don’t realize it’s me. You’re my favorite person in the universe and you just smell so damn good, especially when I’m a dog.”

She was so busy searching for a reaction in his expression that she nearly forgot to breathe. How was it possible to feel this stressed out while wrapped in a blanket with little Worfs printed all over it?

“Please say something,” she whispered, feeling her eyes water. “You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me and I’m terrified that I’ve completely fucked it up.”

That seemed to startle Ben into action, because he stood up and stepped mere inches away from where she was standing. He didn’t seem nearly as big as he did from a dog’s point of view, but Rey liked that he could still tower over her. “You haven’t fucked up anything at all,” he murmured, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s a lot to process, but I’m not going to stop loving you simply because you turn into a dog once a month.”

Rey could barely believe her ears. “You love me?”

Judging from the flash of panic in Ben’s eyes, he hadn’t meant to let that slip. “I mean, I—”

He never got a chance to finish that sentence. She cut him off with a kiss.

* * *

_One month later_

“I don’t need to feed you or anything, right?” Ben asked. He and Rey were curled up on the couch together, watching _Star Trek: Picard._ “Tonight, I mean.” He kept not-so-subtly glancing at his watch. Rey knew he’d started keeping track of sunrise and sunset times. It was sweet, the way he’d adapted to having a werepomeranian for a girlfriend.

“I’m good on food, although I probably wouldn’t say no to more dog cookies,” she joked. When he didn’t smile, she turned to face him. “Ben. Relax. It’ll be fine. Just do what you normally do when I’m...you know. A dog.”

“But what if I do it wrong?” he whispered. “You’re so tiny when you’re a dog. I’m afraid of hurting you.”

That was alarming. “And you weren’t before?”

“No, of course I was, but—well, I didn’t know it was _you._ Now I do.”

Oh. She could see what he meant by that. “Well, on the bright side, if you let me fall asleep on your lap again, you’ll wake up with a naked woman in your arms.”

That finally got a smile out of him. She didn’t stop herself from giving him one last lingering kiss before reminding him that sunset was quickly approaching.

“I’ve always felt alone,” she confessed as she slid out of her clothes. (She’d explained why transforming while fully-clothed was an unpleasant experience. He had no complaints about seeing her naked.) “I don’t know how or why this happens, and I’ve always had to deal with it on my own.”

She didn’t have to see the expression on his face to know how tender it was. “You’re not alone,” he told her.

Rey couldn’t keep the smile off her face. “I know,” she replied. “Neither are you.”

**Author's Note:**

> i am rarely on social media at the moment, but you can find me on [tumblr](https://radioactivesaltghoul.tumblr.com), [twitter](https://twitter.com/r_saltghoul), and [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/radioactivesaltghoul).


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